


The Grief Cycle: Denial

by MerrilyGrey



Series: The Grief Cycle [1]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fake Character Death, False Identity, Fix-It, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Small Towns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-04-30
Packaged: 2019-04-30 07:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14491956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MerrilyGrey/pseuds/MerrilyGrey
Summary: The death of The Winter Soldier shocks the world, but it does not hold a candle to Captain America’s death, just days later. Six years after his miraculous reappearance, he is killed in a battle that forever changes not just the world, but the galaxy. The footage of their deaths are broadcast over the twenty-four hour news cycle for months. The story of Steve Rogers’s life is written and rewritten in every newspaper on Earth.In a cabin in the mountains, the man who used to be known as Steve Rogers reads about his funeral in the paper and smiles while a man who used to go by Bucky makes dinner.





	The Grief Cycle: Denial

“That mustache is never going to fool anyone,” Bucky says, shaking his head and laughing when he comes home just before the sun sets.

“You know you love it,” Steve says, hardly looking up from the paper, except to spare a brief glance at Bucky. He likes it when Bucky gets home early, but he wants to get to the end of this article, just to make sure they’re still saying that Captain America is dead. Reading about Bucky’s death is harder, but he skims through the sentences about the funeral. They were buried side by side in Arlington.

“What I think of it doesn’t matter. It’s a terrible disguise,” Bucky says. He sits down on the bench by the door and takes his boots off. They had been rubbing the back of his heel all afternoon. The simple act of taking them off is a pleasure. He sighs into the quiet of the room.

“Hmm?” Steve asks, casually turning the page.

“I think I wear out clothes faster than normal people” Bucky says.

“No,” Steve answers, “clothes aren’t made to last anymore.”

Bucky shrugs and heads to the kitchen. The fridge is old and clunky and takes effort and control not to topple over when he yanks the handle open, still, it keeps the drinks cold. He takes out two cans, one beer, one cola. They have the same effect on Steve and Bucky which is to say that they have no effect, but some traditions exist for a reason. A beer after work sits right with Bucky, the same way coming home to a cramped kitchen and Steve reading the paper sits right with Bucky. There are some things that make sense to his senses. That’s all there is to it.

Steve closes the paper with a sigh and shuts his eyes. He pinches the bridge of his nose and leans his head back like he used to when he had a nosebleed. He hasn’t had one of those since the 1940s. Some behaviors stick around.

“So,” Bucky says, looking down at the newspaper, folded in half on the coffee table next to Steve. He puts Steve’s Pepsi down next to it. “Still dead?”

Steve folds his hands behind his head and leans back into the plush couch cushions. There is nowhere he has to be tonight, no crisis he must solve, no people he has to protect except for himself and Bucky. After a decade, no, a lifetime lived on someone else’s schedule, he has his first real break.

“Yep,” Steve says, “Still dead.”

There are some people, Steve imagines, who might think they did a selfish thing. After all, his conscience sometimes tries to reason with him on a late Sunday morning, people who fake their own death are usually people who have done something wrong. Of course, some people fake their death, he imagines, because they have to; they do it to stay safe. Captain America is not a person who needs to stay safe by running away from his problems. He fights them, he is a symbol of doing what’s right, but then, Steve asks himself, is Captain America really a person?

The other way of looking at it, Steve tells himself when he waxes philosophical, looking out from his front porch onto the view of jagged mountain peaks and pines, is that he has died. He died twice (three times, if he counts the time he was resuscitated in the hospital in ’38), and it was a pretty thankless experience, all things considered.

Bucky, though? Well, he saw Bucky die both times. He sees it in his nightmares over and over again. They served their country, they fought for humanity, they did their best. Now, Steve will fight tooth and nail to keep Bucky alive, even if that means they both have to be dead.

Those thoughts chase themselves around and around in Steve’s head when he lets them. He can spend whole days sitting on the porch, writing in leather bound journals and tapping his foot to the music on the radio that pours out of his open window. He likes those days, but they leave him feeling restless sometimes, and it has been one of those days.

“Dinner?” Steve asks Bucky, derailing them from any further discussion of Schrodinger’s Cap.

Bucky works in the kitchen next to Steve. Standing side by side, they have their comfortable routine worked out in perfect synchronicity. Bucky puts on water to boil, Steve washes vegetables, Bucky slices vegetables, Steve collects spices and dry ingredients. It goes on in a rhythm that is soothing and predictable, and which feels nothing like fighting at all. The simplicity of domestic tasks, the thrill of creating something rather than destroying, the sensations of soft textures in his hands in his daily life are the things that convince him sometimes that he is, in fact, a different person now.

“You’re never going to guess who I saw today,” Bucky says while he puts the pasta into the boiling water.

“You never know,” Steve lifts his eyebrows, “try me.”

“Elvis.” Bucky says with perfect sincerity and every ounce of honesty in his voice. “No, really. It was him,” he defends his statement while Steve laughs openly. “He’s old now, I mean, not as old as us, I guess, but he’s definitely old. He’s all pudgy and he’s got this wispy, nearly bald old man hair. Still, I swear, there’s no doubt it was him.”

“Alright, Buck,” Steve says, raising his hands in surrender now that the laughing has subsided, “you saw Elvis. Who am I to say otherwise?”

“Huh,” Bucky makes an incredulous sound, “I thought I was going to have to work harder to convince you on that.”

“Oh no,” Steve laughed while he got plates out of the cupboard. “I’m not convinced at all. I believe that you believe you saw Elvis.” He plucked glasses down from the rack over the stove and filled them with water from the tap. “Keep in mind though, I was frozen for his whole career, so it probably means a lot more to you than it does to me.”

“He was a standout,” Bucky sounds quiet, reveling in his memories, “You know I made an escape attempt just to see him once—”

“Yeah, I know, Buck,”

“So you think I’d know if I saw Elvis.”

That’s that on the matter. Bucky will not be swayed from his resolute belief that he saw the King. Who’s to say he didn’t? There is something funny about this town. It started off as a joke between them, and in a way it still is, but the have become more serious over the past weeks. The other residents have an uncanny familiarity about them and a certain standoffishness toward outsiders. When they first arrived it might as well have been a ghost town.

“How was work?” Steve asked, leaning against the counter.

“Oh, you know, work was work. There’s not a whole lot to do in a town this size. I’m fixing up a Chevrolet from the nineteen fifties, which is pretty nice. Like riding a bike almost. Still, we’re lucky if the one person walks through the door all day,” Bucky shrugs.

Privately, Steve is glad that business is slow. There is a smaller chance that people will recognize Bucky. He was against him taking a job so soon in the first place, but Bucky is nothing if not a work horse. He gets cabin fever faster than anyone Steve knows except maybe Tony.

“Stop,” Bucky says.

“What?” Steve asks.

“You’ve got that look on your face like you’re thinking about something heavy.”

“Just, you know,” Steve glances toward the television, turned off but ever present, then to the newspaper lying on the coffee table like a corpse. “Thinking about the team.”

“They’re alright,” Bucky says. “It’s all quiet out there, and everything is under control.”

Logically, Steve knows this, just like he knows that Bucky will keep having this cyclical conversation with him as many times as they need to. Sometimes the roles are reversed and Steve is the one to talk Bucky down from his moments of homesickness or guilt. They practically have the script memorized these days.

“Let’s eat,” Steve says, circumventing the talk. He watches Bucky’s shoulders relax. They are both relieved to move away from the topic.  
It’s hard to feel bad when he’s sitting at the table across from Bucky, who still smells a little like motor oil, while they have a home cooked meal. It is the life that Steve remembers from his early twenties, when talk of America going to war was just that— talk. It is the life he wished the two of them might always have, as long as wives and kids and those kinds of complications could just be kept at bay. It is the life he has now, against all odds. Steve smiles down at his plate and feels a warmth radiate through him, thinking that perhaps this is what a happy ending is like.

“So, aside from reading the paper and lounging around the house all day eating bonbons, what did you do today?” Bucky asks.

“I didn’t eat bonbons,” Steve laughs, “maybe you should get me some so I can do that, though. Come home to find me lounging around in a silk robe, eating candy like a lazy housewife while you’ve been working all day.”

“Maybe I will,” Bucky says, the corner of his mouth lifting into a familiar smile.

“Since you asked, I went for a hike,” Steve answers. “I was thinking of doing some sketches, but I ended up just walking and then it was such a nice day that I didn’t feel like stopping, so I kept going. I like winding up alone in the mountains.”

“You’re going to spook some poor campers doing that,” Bucky says.

“That’ll be one for the tabloids. ‘Captain America and Bigfoot’s Secret Lovechild!’” Steve says, using his Cap Voice. Bucky chokes on his water, laughing. Steve isn’t sorry.

“Does that make me Bigfoot in this scenario?” Bucky asks.

Unsure of how to answer, Steve laughs, too. Bucky as Bigfoot is a funny image, not hard to laugh at, but also he needs a moment to compose an answer. Suggesting that they are lovers is something Steve’s not ready to face, not yet.

“Don’t insult Bigfoot like that, Buck. He’s not nearly so hairy,” Steve says and earns a swift kick to the shin under the table.

After dinner, Steve washes dishes while Bucky mows the lawn. From the kitchen window, Steve can see Bucky silhouetted in the sunset while he works. He takes a moment to watch Bucky’s movements, the slow, deliberate pace that he sets for himself, the careful way he walks and navigates through space. He has always had a grace about him that Steve admires. There is a beauty in his being.

As if feeling Steve’s gaze resting on his back, Bucky turns around and smiles at Steve through the window. Feeling caught, Steve smiles back. The smile that Bucky sends to Steve is a meaningful one, given that he is not prone to show his feelings much, especially the positive ones. The smile that flickers across Steve’s face is more reflexive than anything. He smiles because Bucky smiles. He feels the joy of being near his best friend, of their companionship, of knowing they are both alright.

There is a pocket of solitude that Steve holds back in his smile, however. There are some things he can only feel when Bucky is not looking. Alive or not, together or worlds apart, there are some things that Steve keeps quiet.

There are nights when Bucky’s death, one or the other, surfaces to the front of Steve’s brain. There are nights when the years and years of trauma that made the Winter Soldier become too dark. Some nights are bad, and that’s just the way it is. It is one of those nights, and Steve finds Bucky leaning against the frame of his door as he sometimes does, holding a mug and waiting.

“Hey,” Steve says, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “You too?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, crossing the room in three steps to sit on Steve’s bed. “It’s getting better, but damn. I’m tired.”

“I know,” Steve says. He accepts the mug from Bucky and takes a sip of tea before handing it back. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Bucky says. Steve nods. They have exhausted all the topics of their nightmares. Between therapy, friends, and each other it has been talked to death, and yet they still dream about it. The mind never stops.

“It’s a nice night out there,” Steve says. “Come on.”

Steve grabs the sleeping bag, the big one, from his closet and takes it out onto the back porch. It is reminiscent of the way they used to sleep out on the fire escape on hot summer nights, only here the air is fresh and they can see stars. The crickets are playing a symphony for them, and there is an owl not too far off. There’s enough out here to distract Bucky and nearly enough to distract Steve from Bucky. This is not the time, he tells himself. Bucky needs him. He needs Bucky. This is not the time to complicate matters.

Bucky emerges from the house with bare feet. His mug of tea has been abandoned in the kitchen behind him. He slips into the bag next to Steve and lets Steve wrap his arms around him. This is something they can do for each other, a reminder that they are both here. They drift off to sleep wordlessly. The sun will rise in four hours and when it does it will shine on two men who have found a little bit of peace together.

 


End file.
